On the morning after a deadly and unprecedented rampage by settlers who torched dozens of Palestinian vehicles as well as several homes in retaliation for a deadly Palestinian terror attack, a member of the coalition gave the rioters his complete backing[…]
The Palestinian Red Crescent medical service said two other people were shot and wounded, a third person was stabbed and a fourth was beaten with an iron bar

But in a media blitz Monday morning, coalition MK Zvika Fogel of the extreme-right Otzma Yehudit party — the chairman of the Knesset’s National Security Committee — was unequivocal in his backing for the rioters and his denunciation of the government his party leader Itamar Ben Gvir is a member of

“I want to restore security for the residents of the State of Israel,” Fogel told Galey Israel Radio. “How do we do that? We stop using the word ‘proportionality.’ We stop with our objection to collective punishment [just] because it doesn’t fly with all sorts of courts. We take the gloves off

“Yesterday, a terrorist came from Huwara. A closed, burnt Huwara — that’s what I want to see. That’s the only way to achieve deterrence. After a murder like yesterday’s, we need burning villages when the IDF doesn’t act”

He lambasted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, saying he was ashamed that a coalition he is a part of was “stuttering” in its response to Palestinian terror

In a separate interview with Army Radio, Fogel said he viewed the result of Sunday night’s rampage with “much favor,” adding: “They have understood in Huwara that there is a balance of terror that the IDF doesn’t manage to achieve”

In both interviews, Fogel claimed the settler riots had achieved deterrence against Palestinian terrorism the likes of which nothing has achieved since Operation Protective Shield in 2002, a major IDF operation in the West Bank that helped quell the Second Intifada

Fogel later tweeted that his comments had been “distorted”